CPBL Teams Begin English Commentary Broadcast

CPBL Broadcast Going International

With Taiwan’s CPBL being the only active professional baseball league in the world. For the first time in 31 years, this “biggest secret baseball league” that nobody knows about suddenly found themselves under the international media spotlight.

To deal with the influx of all the new international baseball fans, the CPBL teams decided to broadcast the games with English commentary.

It began with the Rakuten Monkeys streaming their home games on Twitter, and it was a hit among international fans. According to the data released by Eleven Sports Taiwan, the English broadcast accumulated close to five million views in five games.

After seeing the success, the rest of the CPBL teams followed suit and started their English commentary service.

News Tracker: CPBL English Commentary Broadcast

To keep all the information tidy in one place, it would be a good idea to set up a news tracker. As always, we will do our best to keep this updated by tracking all the essential news and rumours in the chronological order.

April 11: Eleven Sports Taiwan Testing Water

On the night before the 2020 CPBL Opening Day, Eleven Sports Taiwan announced that they would provide English commentary broadcast for the first two games of the Monkeys’ home games.

April 16: Extend Another Five Games

After the first game draw close to a million views online, Eleven Sports Taiwan decided to extend the English service until April 19, then review it whether to continue or not.

April 20: USA, Japan, Australia Interested in CPBL

According to the CPBL commissioner, TV networks from Japan, USA and Australia are currently in talks with the league for the international broadcasting rights.

April 20: Guardians, Brothers Interested

UDN broke the news that the Fubon Guardians and CTBC Brothers are thinking to start their English broadcast for international fans.

April 21: CPBL to Add English, Japanese Broadcast

According to the CPBL commissioner, a single company will hold the international broadcasting rights to all the CPBL games. Apart from English commentary, the league are hoping to add Japanese commentary as well.

April 21: Uni-Lions Confirms English Broadcast

Eleven Sports announced that they are going to provide English commentary for the Uni-Lions home games.

April 22: Taoyuan City to Fund the Monkeys’ Broadcast

The Mayor of Taoyuan told the media that the city is going to provide $67,000 USD to fund the English commentary service for all the Rakuten Monkeys’ home games this season.

April 22: Guardians Confirms English Broadcast

According to ETtoday, the Fubon Guardians are going to provide English commentary broadcast for overseas fans starting April 24. The stream will be available on their Twitter account.

April 23: Brothers Confirms English Broadcast

According to the CTBC Brothers’ general manager, the team will begin their English commentary broadcast on May 5.

It will be interesting to see how Ariel Miranda does in his first start against the Monkeys. He has looked great through three starts, but the Monkeys have already tagged Henry Sosa with a loss. It’s already looking like the Monkeys will run away with the first half crown, not necessarily what the CPBL wants in this time of increased attention.